Red
by leuska
Summary: A response fic to a Tumblr prompt (S7). "The scalpel – her only weapon – is still clutched in her hand as she hears her name being called by a familiar voice and she finally, finally turns, even though her eyes can't really focus, her whole world a sea of red."


_A/N: This is another response fic to a prompt from Tumblr. Prompt revealed at the bottom._

* * *

**Red**

The commotion behind the door barely registers as her own blood pounds and roars in her ears, the smash against the door as it flies from its hinges, the heavy-booted people filling inside; it all barely penetrates the fog swirling in her head as she stands unmoving, her eyes blindly roaming over the dead body in front of her. The scalpel – her only weapon – is still clutched in her hand as she hears her name being called by a familiar voice and she finally, _finally_ turns, even though her eyes can't really focus, her whole world a sea of red.

Blue eyes. Familiar, but not those she would expect. Not those she so much wants to see. Anything but the manic glint of determination in Nieman's.

"Beckett...?" Ryan makes a step towards her, then another. The room is deadly quiet, the SWAT guys, police officers, her guys - they all look at her like she is crazy, a caged animal ready to pounce. And she just might be.

The scalpel is still slick and warm in her fingers and she doesn't let it drop - _her only weapon. _Over her shoulder she keeps gazing at Ryan, the world still off its axes, not making any sense. She just killed a woman. Who was about to kill her.

Ryan lays a tentative hand over her shoulder and finally, very slowly, she turns around, dumbly gazing into his face. She just killed a woman. Yet she can still see her wherever she looks, her open mouth gurgling with blood.

He calls her name again. Ryan. Her partner, her brother. She lets her guard down just a notch. Ryan means safety, Espo means safety. It might be over.

She lets the scalpel drop.

* * *

She is led outside by Ryan, his hand curled around her upper arm, guiding her but not coddling. That's good; that's bearable. She walks past the SWAT team, leaving Nieman's dead body in the surgical room, leaving all the horror of the past days behind. It's sunny outside and it surprises her. It's surprisingly bright and warm, but she still shivers. Somebody offers her a hoodie but she can't take it, her hands still bloodied, stained with someone else's death.

Espo re-appears a short while later with a damp cloth, offers it to her wordlessly and she eagerly grabs for it, scrubbing her flesh raw, the material rough against her abused wrists and fingers. She scrubs even harder, wanting the blood gone. All gone. After that, she washes her hands with antibacterial soap a paramedic procured from somewhere, just for good measure, lets Ryan rinse off the suds with bottled water she grabs to greedily drink from, taking a moment as she lets the sun warm the clammy skin of her face.

It's alright. It's all going to be alright. It's over. But it feels like it isn't. She would lie if she said she didn't notice her husband's absence, that she isn't surprised not to see his careworn, hovering presence, somehow missing the tight embrace she knows he would crush her in, an embrace that would comfort and take away the chill in her bones. She pulls the hoodie over her head.

When it looks like she can't be able to hold her thoughts to herself any longer, she finally asks, tries to sell her concern as a simple inquiry, swaying closer to her boys and muttering a single word carrying all the meaning under her breath. "Castle?"

The place is still crawling with police officers, CSU people as well as the member of the special unit, paramedics and the like. Everybody that ought to be here. Everybody but her husband.

Espo and Ryan exchange concerned looks but she's too preoccupied by her clumsy attempt to tie the shoelaces of the sneakers Espo just brought her to notice anything odd about it. "In the city. Couldn't be here," they tell her tightly.

Well, okay. Sounds odd, especially knowing Castle to be one just as stubborn as her when it comes to having her partner's back. But even if it's a bit strange, it's probably for the best too. She would hate for him to see her like this, sore and tired and bloodied, utterly vulnerable. God, she feels so vulnerable. She doesn't want to. But she can't help it.

"Could you just let him know-" she demands, doesn't need to finish the sentence to see Ryan already vigorously nodding at her. "Of course. I will call the precinct right away, let them know you're alright." He throws another glance at Espo and quickly disappears from sight and something doesn't feel right, but she can't put her finger on it and she is too tired to do so anyway, not when another urgent question comes to her mind instead.

"Tyson?" she asks, hating the way her voice breaks over the name. She hasn't even thought about Tyson until now.

"Dead. Shot him myself," Espo says gravely.

Good. That's...good. Finished. Over with.

Her legs are shaky and she needs to support herself against a nearby wall of an ambulance. "Hey Beckett, easy," warns Espo, catching her by the arm and guiding her to sit against the metal step at the rear of the ambulance.

"Am fine, Javi," she murmurs, suddenly out of breath. "Just-" she brings her eyes up to him, feeling small and weak and profoundly hating it. "Can you drive me home?" _To my husband?_

He regards her thoughtfully, something dark lurking behind his eyes, but he gives her one tight nod and that's enough for Kate, that's more than enough. She'll be home soon, be with Castle soon, and that's all she needs to know right now.

Ryan re-appears, a grim expression on his face as he takes Espo by the arm, walks a little further away from the ambulance and they exchange a couple of words, seem to actually be _arguing_ about something, but Beckett can't find it in herself to care.

She just wants to go home, the sharp longing clogging her throat.

* * *

"Ryan," she rasps with a dry throat - still so dry - "hand me your phone."

"Sure, Beckett," he says automatically, extracting the device from his police jacket and handing it over from his spot next to her in the back of Espo's car.

"What do you need it for?" asks Espo from behind the wheel, his eyes leaving the road to look at her in the rearview mirror, his forehead creasing with something that looks like anger mixed with worry. She can't fathom the look but she disregards it for the sake of the device in her hands. She just needs to make this one phone call and then she can finally try to relax a little bit, rest her battered body against the backseat of the moving car, maybe even doze a little until the reach Manhattan.

"I need to call Rick. Tell him I am okay," she murmurs absent-mindedly, her shaky fingers clumsily searching for his name in Ryan's phone book.

"Beckett," says Ryan hesitantly, and when she ignores him, he covers her hand with his over the phone, disrupting her movements and screwing up her attempt to dial.

"What, Ryan?" she snaps. She is tired, she is battered, her nerves tightly-coiled and patience tested one too many times today. She was nearly fucking murdered and had to slice a woman's throat to survive. She is fed up with their strange behavior and she just fucking wants to hear her husbands voice, needs the reassurance of his deep, soothing rumble as much as she is sure he needs to hear from herself that she is alright. So what's so wrong with that?

The guys exchange hesitant looks and the feeling of something ominous, not yet revealed but oh so bad returns to her full force, all the signs she's been until now steadily ignoring finally starting to make sickening sense. Just like that, she knows. She _knows_, but she still yanks the phone from Ryan's meddling hand, tries to dial again, her movements frantic now.

She only needs to hear his voice.

"Beckett, stop." Espo commands, his voice tight and unusually controlled as he pulls the car over, bringing it to a halt in a stretch of dirt.

She doesn't understand any of it, why they stopped, why Ryan is looking at her in that pitiful way, but she does, oh she _does_, and when Espo turns around in his seat to look at her- _Oh, God. They stopped. It's so bad- so bad they needed to stop to have this conversation._

Her hands start to shake. "What's going on? Where is Castle, why wasn't he there with you?" Kate growls, but she already knows even if she doesn't want to hear the answer. Doesn't want to but needs to at the same time. _Oh, God, let him be-_ There is no air in her lungs.

"Beckett, Tyson got to him first." Ryan says, his eyes too bright, too understanding, and she might be sick. Oh, God, she is sick.

Her eyes shoot to Espo, pleading for answers, a confirmation or better yet, a denial, _anything_, her heart hammering in her chest, light-headed with dread.

"He's not dead," Espo supplies quickly, seeing her sway in her spot. As if that's any consolation for her, _not dead,_ but he's already talking again, although his words don't seem to be making any sense. "We found him, Tyson I mean – Castle and us – and through him, through his phone, we got to Nieman and you. But before that, Tyson chose to play a sick game and shot Castle through his kneecaps just to make sure he couldn't run away from him. As if that man would ever run away without you," he scoffs in disdain, but she doesn't listen anymore.

Her insides protest, her stomach heaves. Shot. Through his knees. Oh, God. But that's not fatal, right? It's complicated and messy and God, _painful_, but not fatal. _Not fatal_, her heart stutters.

"No, but he lost a lot of blood," replies Espo and did she really say that out loud?

"Why?" she hears herself asking and what a stupid question; because he's been shot, that's why. Shot by a sick bastard.

"He- it took a little while for help to come." Ryan is saying, touching her knee gently and she jerks away, can't handle anyone touching her right now. Even through the fog, the questions flood her brain; where was this? Why did help take so long? Some abandoned place? Outside the city? Could be. She herself was in an abandoned warehouse just outside the City. She has no idea. God, Castle. She has no idea.

"Where is he?" she rasps in a feeble voice, fisting her hands and relishing the pain as her nails dig against her palm. She thought dealing with Nieman- She thought it was over. But it's only started.

"He's in Mount Sinai," Espo supplies quickly. "I got a message from one of our guys just as the paramedics released you. We're headed there right now."

And inexplicable rage fills her, fueled by a crippling helplessness. They've knows for minutes, hours, and nobody cared to tell her. Her boys, her _brothers_, didn't tell her.

"Why didn't you tell me right away?" She moans, shooting a desperate, furious glance at Ryan, sees him shrink away from her anger. It's Espo who answers, his eyes firm and resolute.

"We needed to get you checked out, cleaned up before driving you to him. There was no point in telling you outward, you were still in shock over Nieman and besides, you couldn't do anything, can't do anything until we get there and he's out of surgery."

He says it so matter-of-factly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, getting checked out by paramedics and cleaning her hands off Nieman's blood, taking a precious moment to just _bask in the sun_, all that while her husband was lying shot in a hospital, possibly fighting for his life. And they thought there was _no point._ Her whole body shakes now, adrenaline, fatigue and rage all mixed into one.

"You had _no_ right," she says in a low, warning tone, her heart cracking under the weight of information and the betrayal she feels. "I'm his _wife_."

They stay quiet at that and it makes it somehow worse. They ought to have an answer. She deserves an answer. Her head spins. She looks out the window, at the stretch of dirt at the side of the road. Trapped here, while he's out there, hurt and alone. Possibly dying.

The car isn't moving. _Why isn't the car moving?_

" Why are you not- Get the fucking car moving, Javi, get it moving, _now_!" she shouts, her fist hitting the back of the passenger seat, and even she can hear the slight hysteria in her voice, thick with tears, but she won't let them fall. No. There is no reason to let them fall; not yet anyway. Her husband is not dead yet.

* * *

She hears the glass door of the private ICU slide open and without a second glance, she knows who it is. They loom behind her like two ominous shadows, but she can't bring herself to care, to look around, to leave her watch over her husbands limp body lying in the hospital bed for even a second.

"Beckett, you should go home." Ryan starts tentatively. "You are tired, hurt, exhausted..."

That little speech certainly doesn't get her attention. He doesn't give up though, tries another tactic.

"Beckett, this is an ICU-"

"So what? I don't care. I am his _wife_."

"But the nurse outside said-" Ryan starts tentatively.

"I don't care what she said. I am staying here with him."

She is still so very angry with them. They must hear the note of anger and desperate possessiveness in her tone as she squeezes Castle's hand, because after a beat, Ryan drops the subject. "Okay". Espo drags him away, nods grimly to Beckett but she doesn't spare them a glance, steadily watching over Castle's unmoving form.

She is so tired. Bone-deep weariness swirls inside her veins, trying to drag her under, make her succumb to a drowsy sleep, but she can't. God knows that whenever she closes her eyes, she sees her captor's face looming over her. Sneering, victorious. Until it isn't anymore; until it contorts in a grimace of surprise and pain, her warm blood coating Beckett's hands as it gushes from her throat.

Kate snaps her eyes open (she must have dozed off after all) seeking Castle's pale, unmoving face. Greyish and waxy. Nothing like the vibrant man she knows.

And she waits.

* * *

He doesn't come to until late in the night. His eyelids flutter before finally fully opening and after a beat, a tired but tremendous smile graces his lips.

"Hi," he whispers and she nearly keens with relief, drowns in the sparking blue of his gaze.

"Hey," she murmurs back, her whole face breaking open for him to see.

His eyes are still glazed with drugs and sleep and he slowly looks around, takes in his surroundings. "What the-"

His eyes grow huge and frantic then, snapping to her face and she exactly pinpoint the moment the reality hits him; where he is, what has happened. His hand gropes wildly over the covers searching for something, not settling until he finally finds her hand, gripping it tighter than she would expect from him after everything he's just went through.

"You-" he stutters, but she's already bending over him, smoothing out the creases his worry formed on his forehead.

"Shh, Castle," she sooths. "I'm fine, everything is fine. It's over."

He's still ill with worry, she can see, the memories of what must have happened before he got shot playing in his mind. "It's okay," she murmurs over and over, "you've got to me on time."

Maybe not in person, but with his plan, his smart counter-move against Tyson. That's what saved her life. He seems to understand that too, because his features relax a fraction at her words, his rigid muscles loosening as he lets himself sink against the pillows once again.

She rewards him with a brilliant smile. "Sleep, babe," she hums. "Promise I'll be here when you wake up."

He smiles, lets his eyes fall shut with ease.

* * *

_Prompt: __7x15 Reckoning - Castle doesn't come rescue Beckett from Nieman - author can choose the reason._


End file.
